Bonnie and Clyde (1967) - IMDb IMDb There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error Bonnie Parker, a bored waitress falls in love with an ex-con named Clyde Barrow and together they start a violent crime spree through the country, robbing cars and banks. Director: From $2.99 (SD) on Amazon Video ON DISC a list of 38 titles created 26 Apr 2012 a list of 42 titles created 10 Sep 2012 a list of 37 titles created 05 Oct 2013 a list of 45 titles created 24 Jun 2015 a list of 36 titles created 7 months ago Title: Bonnie and Clyde (1967) 7.9/10 Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. Won 2 Oscars. Another 20 wins & 27 nominations.

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They amass a small gang of willing accomplices, including C.W. Moss, a mechanic to fix whatever cars they steal which is important especially for their getaways, and Buck Barrow, one of Clyde's older brothers. The only reluctant tag-along is Buck's ... Written by Huggo Taglines: A brilliantly made, groundbreaking film that chronicles the short lives of America's most infamous criminals. See more » Genres: September 1967 (USA) See more » Also Known As: Bonnie y Clyde See more » Filming Locations: Did You Know? Trivia The real Blanche Barrow sued Warner Brothers over the way she was depicted in the film. In reality, Barrow was the same age as Bonnie Parker, arguably better looking than her, she was not a preacher's daughter and had married Buck knowing full well that he was an escaped prisoner and twice divorced. See more » Goofs During the Kodak scene, the door to Buck's car closes shut, but we do not see or hear him close it. See more » Quotes Clyde Barrow : [Bonnie can't stop laughing after Clyde held up a failed bank and left empty-handed] We got a dollar ninety-eight, and you're laughing!

I Love to Spend Each Sunday with You (uncredited) Written and Performed by Eddie Cantor Played on the radio Bloodshed in the American Dustbowl... 7 October 2008 | by moonspinner55 (las vegas, nv) – See all my reviews Although numerous chapters in cinema manuals have been dedicated to Arthur Penn's violent, jagged, cynical "Bonnie and Clyde"--and, indeed, it kick-started a new permissiveness in America movies which then generated many imitations--the first twenty or so minutes of the picture are really awful. Depression-era waitress, bored and thrill seeking, finds herself drawn to a smooth-talking, reckless hood, an ex-con who, when playfully dared to, robs a general store right in front of her. He's sexually impotent but does have a sympathetic heart for the unfortunates and the working class; she's a high-wire act, strictly amoral and greedy. Their initial meeting outside her house has all the conventions of a standard 1930s drama--and just because the movie's look is generally correct doesn't mean what's happening on the screen is original.

Producer Warren Beatty and screenwriters Robert Benton and David Newman envisioned the French New Wave in regards to the film's approach and style, and their efforts paid off in this respect (it's a very good-looking picture, shot by Burnett Guffey, who won an Oscar). However, Arthur Penn's direction isn't visionary, and the multiple car-riding shots with back projection don't seem to break new ground. The film's greatest achievement aside from its textured look and feel is the casting: Beatty and Faye Dunaway do pretty marvelous work in the leads; Gene Hackman and Estelle Parsons also fine as Clyde's brother and sister-in-law (Parsons won the film's second of two Oscars as Best Supporting Actress). The violence grows increasingly, steadily, as the film inches toward its queasy conclusion, while Penn juggles (successfully at times) ribald character moments with deadly serious--and bloody--scenes (which also became fashionable). The sweat and the flies, the downtrodden and the righteous, they all get a work-out in this scenario, which, in its best moments, has a prickly-comic and dangerous edge. **1/2 from **** 5 of 6 people found this review helpful.

Was this review helpful to you? Yes ‎Bonnie and Clyde (1967) directed by Arthur Penn • Reviews, film + cast • Letterboxd 1 We rob banks. A glorious deluge of ultraviolence, Bonnie and Clyde was uproariously controversial at the time of its release for its undaunted depiction of savagery and depravity. The true story of one of the most notorious criminal duos in history is brought larger than life through two exquisite performances from Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. Their whirlwind relationship, sparked in an instant and never once slowing down, tore all across the central United States as they found themselves on a constant quest for untold riches. Together with Clyde's brother Buck (played by a brilliant Gene Hackman in an early career role) and his wife, along with a hapless tagalong who barely receives any depth or development, they formed the… 3 Based on the true stories surrounding the famous gangster pair, Bonnie and Clyde tells the story of a young couple who began robbing little stores and eventually banks during the times of the Great Depression, with the help of C.W.

Moss and Clyde's brother Buck and his wife Blanche, forming the 'mediatic' Barrow Gang. Taking into account that Arthur Penn's story keeps a very regular tone and hardly progresses until the powerful finale - 'all we see' is a couple (and their gang) robbing banks during a couple of hours in order to escape from their boring lives - what makes his film so special and so remarkable? Historical importance aside, Bonnie and Clyde is a very charming and incomparably… 2 Bonnie and Clyde is a red-blooded masterwork. It is the epitome of high-class American cinema, where excess is fine art and absurdity is brilliant poetry. A high-octane attack on high-brow posturing, Bonnie and Clyde is a genuine work of art. It has served as the demented template for all future lovers on the lam stories. It is outrageously pleasurable and super violent, with an inspired sense of gory extravagance depicted in a lovingly unapologetic bias. Bonnie and Clyde is perfect filmmaking at its most meaningful and merry. Bonnie and Clyde is a hypersexual treatise on young love and juvenile fantasy. It is wild, dangerous, and horny.

Bonnie and Clyde is also a disturbed film with an emphasis on repressed and… Review by Joe ★★★★★ They say pictures don't lie, but the truth is they can lie as bad as anybody, including Clyde Barrow, who seduces Bonnie Parker with the promise of an exciting life full of sex, wealth, and danger (I guess 1 out of 3 ain't bad). That theme of unfulfilled promise runs deep - take a look at the hilarious sequence with Gene Wilder's Eugene and his girlfriend temporarily taking up with the gang, and the way it ends on a grim anti-punchline that only Bonnie, cursed by foresight, really understands. The movie's commercial and generic promises ultimately DO get filled, though, with plenty of violent shootouts and chases, including the final one that gives the audience more than they could ever… Review by Jeremy Ratzlaff ★★★★½ Wow. What a perfect opening sequence. Faye Dunaway sells her character in the first three minutes before even uttering a single line of dialogue. Actually, the times when this film is at its strongest are the times when nobody says anything. The awkward love making sequence. ("I told you I'm not a lover boy.") C.W.

at the wheel, the pair of injured lovers sleeping in the back seat. Mostly, Bonnie's quiet moments of discomfort and seething anger. She is the most interesting character in the film. Dare I say it, the film is more about Bonnie than it is about Bonnie and Clyde. So many interesting characters walk in and out. At its peak, the Barrow Gang is seven people… Review by Not Pauline Kael How do you make a good movie in this country without being jumped on? BONNIE AND CLYDE is the most excitingly American American movie since THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE. The audience is alive to it. Our experience as we watch it has some connection with the way we reacted to movies in childhood: with how we came to love them and to feel they were ours – not an art that we learned over the years to appreciate but simply and immediately ours. When an American movie is contemporary in feeling, like this one, it makes a different kind of contact with an American audience from the kind that is made by European films, however contemporary.

Yet any movie that is… Bonnie and Clyde (1967) Pages: ( 1 ) ( 2 ) ( 3 ) Background Bonnie and Clyde (1967) is one of the sixties' most talked-about, volatile, controversial crime/gangster films combining comedy, terror, love, and ferocious violence. It was produced by Warner Bros. - the studio responsible for the gangster films of the 1930s, and it seems appropriate that this innovative, revisionist film redefined and romanticized the crime/gangster genre and the depiction of screen violence forever. Its producer, 28 year-old Warren Beatty, was also its title-role star Clyde Barrow, and his co-star Bonnie Parker, newcomer Faye Dunaway, became a major screen actress as a result of her breakthrough in this influential film. Likewise, unknown Gene Hackman was recognized as a solid actor and went on to star in many substantial roles (his next major role was in The French Connection (1971) ). The story of Clyde's rise and self-destructive fall as an anti-authoritarian criminal gangster is clearly depicted.

Both tragic outlaw figures exemplify 'innocents on the run' who cling to each other and try to function as a family. The film, with many opposing moods and shifts in tone (from serious to comical), is a cross between a gangster film, tragic-romantic traditions, a road film and buddy film, and screwball comedy. It exemplified many of the characteristics of experimental film-making from the French New Wave (Nouvelle Vague) movement. [Originally, the film was intended to be directed by Jean-Luc Godard or Francois Truffaut, who opted out and made Fahrenheit 451 (1966) instead.] The film's major poster about the infamous couple romanticized violence and proclaimed: "They're young...they're in love...and they kill people." [Earlier films that recounted similar adventures of infamous, doomed lovers-on-the-run who are free and accountable to no one include Fritz Lang's You Only Live Once (1937) with Henry Fonda and Sylvia Sidney, Joseph H.

Lewis' cult classic Gun Crazy (1949) with John Dall and Peggy Cummins, Nicholas Ray's They Live By Night (1949) (remade by Robert Altman with its original title Thieves Like Us (1974) from Edward Anderson's source novel and starring Shelley Duvall and Keith Carradine), and The Bonnie Parker Story (1958) with Dorothy Provine and Jack Hogan.

Later outlaw-couple films include B-movie Killers Three (1968) with Diane Varsi and Robert Walker, Jr., Terrence Malick's Badlands (1973) , Ridley Scott's Thelma and Louise (1991), Kalifornia (1993), and Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers (1994).] The landmark film by post-WWII director Arthur Penn (who had previously directed The Miracle Worker (1962), The Train (1964) (uncredited and replaced by John Frankenheimer), and Mickey One (1965) - also with Beatty) was ultimately a popular and commercial success, but it was first widely denounced by film reviewers for glamorizing the two killers and only had mediocre box-office results. In the autumn of 1967, it opened and closed quite quickly - enough time for it to be indignantly criticized for its shocking violence, graphic bullet-ridden finale and for its blending of humorous farce with brutal killings. Then, after a period of reassessment, there were glowing reviews, critical acclaim, a Newsweek cover story, and the film's re-release - and it was nominated for ten Academy Awards.

The film's screenplay by first-timers David Newman and Robert Benton (both editors at Esquire who had never written a screenplay) - a composite image of many early 20th century outlaws, was loosely based on the historical accounts of two 1930s Depression-era, social misfit bandits who terrorized the Midwest. In the film, the two young and good-looking gangsters become counter-cultural, romantic fugitives and likable folk heroes with semi-mythic celebrity status, recalling Robin Hood and the outlaws of the West. However, the sordid and bleak reality behind the self-made publicity that the latter-day doomed couple generates (through poetry and photos) is also revealed. The Dust-Bowl period is effectively evoked, although the loose adaptation is also an inaccurate and fictionalized retelling of history. When they first met, the real Bonnie (19 years old) and Clyde (21 years old) weren't glamorous characters, and their romantic involvement was questionable. She was already the wife of an imprisoned murderer, and he was a petty thief and vagrant with numerous misdemeanors.

[The 'white trash' couple (described in the local newspaper as "the Southwest's most notorious bandit and his gun moll") first met in Texas in the early 1930s. Their brief, bloody crime spree (involving kidnapping and murders) ended on May 23, 1934 alongside state Highway 154 near Arcadia, Louisiana (the town nearest to the ambush site in north-central Louisiana), when the desperados were ambushed and killed by four Texas lawmen (led by Texas Ranger Frank Hamer), accompanied by Bienville Parish Sheriff Henderson Jordan and his deputy Prentiss Oakley. Their bullet-ridden vehicle was hit with 187 shots. In actuality, the 25 year-old Barrow and 23-year old Parker were armed and ready for the ambush when they were killed. Currently, Louisiana's largest outdoor flea market (held one weekend a month) originated in 1990 in Arcadia as Bonnie and Clyde Trade Days.] Cartoon-style slapstick comedy [a tribute to Mack Sennett's silent films and Keystone Kops car chases and getaways] and banjo music (e.g.

Foggy Mountain Breakdown from Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, helped to introduce country music to mainstream films) and ballads accompany many of the film's scenes. The film's overall impact was heightened by its open examination of the gallant Clyde's sexuality-impotence and the link to his gun-toting violence. [To fulfill heartthrob Warren Beatty's image as a sex-symbol, he is finally able to consummate his love for Bonnie by film's end.] Penn's masterpiece won two Oscars for Best Supporting Actress (Estelle Parsons in an over-the-top performance) and Best Cinematography (Burnett Guffey) for its great evocation of period detail, with eight other nods for Best Picture and Best Actor (producer/actor Warren Beatty), Best Actress (Faye Dunaway), Best Supporting Actor (Gene Hackman), Best Supporting Actor (Michael J. Pollard), Best Director (Arthur Penn), Best Story and Screenplay (Newman and Benton), and Best Costume Design (Theadora Van Runkle, who later worked on The Godfather, Part II (1974) ).

(Although Robert Towne, who later wrote Chinatown (1974) , worked on the final form of the screenplay and served as a special consultant, he took no screen credit.) In the late 1960s, the film's sympathetic, revolutionary characters and its social criticism appealed to anti-authority American youth who were part of the counter-cultural movement protesting the Vietnam War, the corrupt social order, and the U.S. government's role. [The same could be said for Mike Nichols' The Graduate (1967) , another popular film released in the same year.] The restless couple's robberies of banks, viewed somewhat sympathetically by the rural dispossessed, occurred at a time when the institutions were 'robbing' and ruining indebted, Dust Bowl farmers. The robberies of the glamorous, thrill-seeking young couple - mostly innocent and minor at the beginning of their crime spree, unfortunately escalate into more violent and murderous escapades. The influence of the film extended to commercial merchandise in the form of hairstyles, authentic period music of the 30s, and gangster retro-clothing (such as double-breasted suits, berets, fedoras, and the maxi-skirt).

The film also permanently changed the form and substance of popular films - for better or worse. Lobby cards for the film described its main elements: Clyde was the leader. Bonnie wrote poetry. C.W. was a Myrna Loy fan who had a bluebird tattooed on his chest. Buck told corny jokes and carried a Kodak. Blanche was a preacher's daughter who kept her fingers in her ears during the gunfights. They played checkers and photographed each other incessantly. On Sunday nights they listened to Eddie Cantor on the radio. All in all, they killed 18 people. They were the strangest damned gang you ever heard of. Another lobby poster described their first auspicious meeting: They met in 1930. She was stark naked, yelling at him out the window while he tried to steal her mother's car. In a matter of minutes they robbed a store, fired a few shots, and then stole somebody else's car. At that point, they had not yet been introduced.

The Story Following a golden, old-style Warner Bros shield, grainy, unglamorous, blurry, sepia-toned snapshots of the Barrow and Parker families (at the time of Bonnie and Clyde's childhood) play on a black background during the film's opening, accompanied by the loud clicking sound of a camera shutter. The credit titles are interspersed with flashes of more semi-documentary, brownish-tinged pictures. The text of the major credits fade from white to blood red on the dark background. 30's hand-cranked phonographic music (Rudy Vallee's popular love song of the period Deep Night) is faintly heard - a haunting omen from another era. The snapshot immediately preceding "DIRECTED BY ARTHUR PENN" is of three gunmen kneeling - making an unconscious connection between camera shots and fatal gunshots. The pictures of the Hollywood stars displace the unglamorous, 1930s pictures of the historic pair - the last two title cards describe the film's major protagonists: BONNIE PARKER - was born in Rowena, Texas, 1910 and then moved to West Dallas.

In 1931 she worked in a cafe before beginning her career in crime. CLYDE BARROW - was born to a family of sharecroppers. As a young man he became a small-time thief and robbed a gas station. He served two years for armed robbery and was released on good behavior in 1931. The last title card dissolves into a colorful closeup of red, luscious lips (that are being licked after lipstick has been applied). The immense lips belong to blonde Bonnie Parker (Faye Dunaway) - a bored, beautiful, and sexually-frustrated, Depression-era Texas cafe waitress who is naked and narcissistically primping in front of a mirror. It is a spring day in the early 1930s in Depression-affected West Dallas, Texas. She is in her low-income frame house, and she is pouting - despairing of her unattractive, narrow existence in a tawdry environment. Aching from the enforced oppression of her confining room (and life), Bonnie flings herself down on her bed - appearing to be trapped behind the bars of the bedframe. Frustrated, she repeatedly strikes the cage surrounding her.

In a closeup, her eyes reflect her torment. As she rises and goes behind a dressing screen, the camera reveals the top of her bureau - it is humbly decorated with a small, vulgar collection of porcelain figurines and a rag doll, and a few photographs are tacked on the drab wall. Then, she looks out the screen of her second floor window and sees a furtive young man casing the area and contemplating hotwiring and stealing her mother's car in front of their yard. When she catches him in the act - she speaks the first line in the film: Hey boy, what you doin' with my Mama's car? When he is caught, he spins around in astonishment, looks up toward the window - obviously catching a glimpse of Bonnie's naked body temptingly framed there, and smirks. The camera exchanges shots between them.

Drawn to the feeling of intense excitement and his apparent potency, she calls out: "Wait there!," hastily throws on some clothes from her closet, and urgently descends in loud clunky steps down the dark stairs (in a low-angled shot pointing upward) to meet the handsomely-dressed drifter named Clyde Barrow (Warren Beatty) with a white fedora. When she gets down to the outside porch (a sign behind her advertises "WASH TAKEN IN HERE"), she boldly tells him: "Ain't you ashamed? You're tryin' to steal an ol' lady's automobile." Before their posturing, arrogant battle of wits and sarcastic repartee, he proposes to treat her to a Coke in town. When she flippantly tells him that she is "goin' to work anyway," they both talk with flirtatious tones during their sidewalk stroll (tracked by the camera with multiple stops and starts) and discover each other's "line of work" - she's a cheap cafe waitress and he's an ex-con for armed robbery: Clyde: What kind of work do ya do? Bonnie: None of your business.

Clyde (flattering): I'll bet you're a movie star? Huh? A lady mechanic? Bonnie (amused): No. Bonnie and Clyde - YouTube Bonnie and Clyde Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. The interactive transcript could not be loaded. Loading... Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. Published on Dec 9, 2013 Bonnie and Clyde, Their deaths did not make the " popularity " of their world -class criminal . The proof , their life story even made ​​into a movie . Especially after police searched the residence they found a collection of poems written by Bonnie , then pictures of the two of them are posing with weapons that they used while committing a crime . The film they made ​​up the story in 1937 , three years after the death of Bonnie and Clyde . Directed by Fritz Lang 's You Only Live Once title . Directed by William Witney was followed in 1958 with the film called The Bonnie Parker Story .

Ten years later , two senior figures Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway played a character in the film Bonnie and Clyde directed by Arthur Penn . The television station did not want to lose , when in 1992 raised the real story of this couple in the movie Bonnie & Clyde : The True Story . Truly remarkable . Criminal relapse into a celebrity , because the story is recorded , was appointed also to the big screen . Romantic couples like Romeo & Juliet is rob , kill , steal and die , together . Cars , photos and their weapons dimuseumkan , for perpetuating their lunge . Actually , whom Bonnie & Clyde ? Bonnie Elizabeth Parker born in Texas USA , October 1, 1910 , the second of three children of Charles Parker and Emma lives with her ​​mother in Cement City , Dallas . The father died when Bonnie was four years old . Although the mother is only a garment factory worker , he always stands out in school , because high values ​​. One of his prowess , writing poetry . His work can now be seen in the book The Story of Suicide Sal and The Trail 's End . Unfortunately , intelligence is not maximized .

When Bonnie fell in love with his classmate Roy Thornton , she chose to marry 25 September 1926 . School he or she left off . Ironically , the age of marriage was not long . Only three years old . This couple chose to part , though never officially registered their divorce . When Roy heard Bonnie was killed in a raid by the police , he had commented , " He's better off dead , shot , rather than to be caught by the police ... " Category Bonnie and Clyde Movie Review (1967) | Roger Ebert Tweet There is a moment in "Bonnie and Clyde" when Bonnie, frightened and angry, runs away from Clyde through a field of wheat, and as he pursues her, a cloud sweeps across the field and shadows them. Seen in a high, wide-angle shot, it is one of those moments of serendipity given to few movies. Today the cloud could be generated by computers; on the day the scene was filmed in Texas, it was a perfectly timed accident of nature. Advertisement The cloud carries foreboding; Bonnie and Clyde are doomed, and uneasily realize it. Not long after that scene, Bonnie has a final reunion with her mother.

By then Bonnie Parker ( Faye Dunaway ) and Clyde Barrow (Warren Beatty) are famous outlaws, celebrated in the press as populist bank robbers in an America gripped by the Depression. Bonnie speaks wistfully of marrying Clyde and moving in next door to her mother. "You live within a mile of me, honey, and you'll be dead,” her mother flatly pronounces. They would indeed die, in a hail of bullets that permanently changed the way the movies depicted violence. But their lives provided a template that would be used time and again in later films; as the ads put it, "They're young ... they're in love ... and they kill people.” From "Bonnie and Clyde" descended " Badlands ," " Days of Heaven ," " Thelma and Louise ," " Drugstore Cowboy ," " Natural Born Killers " and countless other movies in which ordinary people were transformed by sudden violence into legend. "Bonnie and Clyde," made in 1967, was called "the first modern American film” by critic Patrick Goldstein, in an essay on its 30th anniversary. Certainly it felt like that at the time. The movie opened like a slap in the face.

American filmgoers had never seen anything like it. In tone and freedom it descended from the French new wave, particularly Francois Truffaut's own film about doomed lovers, " Jules and Jim .” Indeed, it was Truffaut who first embraced the original screenplay by David Newman and Robert Benton, and called it to the attention of Warren Beatty , who was determined to produce it. Advertisement The legend of the film's production has become almost as famous as its heroes. Stories are told about how Beatty knelt at the feet of studio boss Jack Warner, begging for the right to make the film. How Warner saw the original cut and hated it. How the movie premiered at the Montreal film festival, and was roasted by Bosley Crowther of the New York Times. How Warner Bros. determined to dump it in a chain of Texas drive-ins, and how Beatty implored the studio to give it a chance. How it opened and quickly closed in the autumn of 1967, panned by the critics, receiving only one ecstatic opening-day newspaper review.

(Modesty be damned: It was my own, calling it "a milestone in the history of American movies, a work of truth and brilliance" and predicting "years from now it is quite possible that 'Bonnie and Clyde' will be seen as the definitive film of the 1960s.") The movie closed, but would not go away. The soundtrack, bluegrass by Flatt and Scruggs, went to the top of the charts. Theodora Van Runkle's berets and maxiskirts for Dunaway started a global fashion craze. Newsweek critic Joseph Morgenstern famously wrote that his original negative review had been mistaken. The movie reopened, went on to become one of Warner Bros.' biggest hits and won 10 nominations (with Oscars for supporting actress Estelle Parsons and cinematographer Burnett Guffey ). Advertisement But that is only the success story. More important was the impact the film had on the American movie industry. Beatty's willingness to play a violent character with sexual dysfunction was unusual for a traditional 1960s leading man. In a famous Esquire profile by Rex Reed, which appeared as the movie was opening, he was dismissed as a has-been pretty boy.

"Bonnie and Clyde" put him permanently on the Hollywood map. Beatty and director Arthur Penn cast the movie mostly with unknown stage actors--so successfully that all the major players (Dunaway, Parsons, Gene Hackman , Michael J. Pollard , Gene Wilder ) became stars on the basis of this film. Behind the camera, the movie launched the careers not only of Van Runkle, but also of editor Dede Allen (a New Yorker breaking into a closed shop) and production designer Dean Tavoularis, who went on to work on Francis Ford Coppola's " The Godfather " and " Apocalypse Now ." And the cinematography of Guffey launched a whole new wave of its own, of films shot and edited in the more impressionistic French style. Arthur Penn came fresh to the project after a resounding failure ("Mickey One," a self-conscious but intriguing art film) also made with Beatty. His later credits included " Night Moves ," " Alice's Restaurant " and " Little Big Man ." Co-writer Robert Benton became an important director (" Kramer vs. Kramer ," " Places in the Heart "). It's as if that one film sent all those careers cascading down to the present day.

Advertisement It was a film in which all of the unlikely pieces were assembled at the right time. And more than anything else, it was a masterpiece of tone, in which the actors and filmmakers were all in sync as they moved the material back and forth between comedy and tragedy. The opening scenes are lighthearted, starting with Clyde's bravado after Bonnie catches him trying to steal her mother's car. She senses in him, instantly, the means of her escape from a boring west Texas town. What he essentially supplies--for her, for the hero-worshipping gang member C.W. Moss (Pollard) and for the hungry newspaper readers -- is the possibility of glamour in lives of drab poverty. "We're the Barrow Gang," Clyde says, introducing them at the beginning of a bank robbery so they'll be sure to get credit. And one of the movie's great moments comes as Clyde lends his gun to a dispossessed black sharecropper so he could shoot at a bank's foreclosure sign. If Clyde offers glamour, Bonnie offers publicity. She writes "The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde" and sends it to a newspaper, and she poses for photos holding a machinegun and a cigar.

Clyde's brother Buck (Hackman) is more level-headed, more concerned with bank jobs than newspaper headlines. He comes attached to Blanche (Parsons), whose whiny complaints get on Bonnie's nerves (when agents surround one of their hideouts, she runs screaming across the lawn, still holding the spatula she was using to cook supper). Advertisement Penn directs the film as a series of set-pieces, which remain in the memory, focused and clear. The Okie camp where homeless farmers, tractored off their lands by the banks, hunch over campfires. Bonnie's sad, overcast, foggy family reunion. The bank robbery that goes all wrong when C.W. stupidly parks the getaway car. The way laughter turns blindingly to violence, as when a stickup ends with a meat cleaver and a sack of flour, or when a getaway ends with a bullet in a bank man's face. The run-in with a state trooper (Denver Pyle) who is made to pose with Bonnie and Clyde, and then unwisely released. The scene where C.W., a gas station attendant, leaves his job and runs off with the gang that's just robbed him.

The scene where C.W.'s father effortlessly browbeats his wimpy son for getting a tattoo. And then the slow-motion ballet of the final execution. Today, the freshness of "Bonnie and Clyde" has been absorbed in countless other films, and it's hard to see how fresh and original it felt in 1967 -- just as the impact of " Citizen Kane ," in 1941, may not be obvious to those raised in the shadow of its influence. When I saw it, I had been a film critic for less than six months, and it was the first masterpiece I had seen on the job. I felt an exhilaration beyond describing. I did not suspect how long it would be between such experiences, but at least I learned that they were possible. Advertisement Bonnie and Clyde Movie Review (1967) | Roger Ebert Tweet "Bonnie and Clyde" is a milestone in the history of American movies, a work of truth and brilliance. It is also pitilessly cruel, filled with sympathy, nauseating, funny, heartbreaking, and astonishingly beautiful.

If it does not seem that those words should be strung together, perhaps that is because movies do not very often reflect the full range of human life. Advertisement The lives in this case belonged, briefly, to Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker. They were two nobodies who got their pictures in the paper by robbing banks and killing people. They weren't very good at the bank robbery part of it, but they were fairly good at killing people and absolutely first-class at getting their pictures in the paper. Bonnie was a gum-chewing waitress and Clyde was a two-bit hood out on parole. But from the beginning, they both seemed to have the knack of entertaining people. Bonnie wrote ballads and mailed them in with pictures Clyde took with his Kodak. They seemed to consider themselves public servants, bringing a little sparkle to the poverty and despair of the Dust Bowl during the early Depression years. "Good afternoon," Clyde would say when they walked into a bank. "This is the Barrow Gang." In a way Bonnie and Clyde were pioneers, consolidating the vein of violence in American history and exploiting it, for the first time in the mass media.

Advertisement Under Arthur Penn's direction, this is a film aimed squarely and unforgivingly at the time we are living in. It is intended, horrifyingly, as entertainment. And so it will be taken. The kids on dates will go to see this one, just like they went to see "Dirty Dozen" and "Born Losers" and "Hells Angels on Wheels." But this time, maybe, they'll get more than they counted on. The violence in most American movies is of a curiously bloodless quality. People are shot and they die, but they do not suffer. The murders are something to be gotten over with, so the audience will have its money's worth, the same is true of the sex. Both are like the toy in a Crackerjack box: Worthless, but you feel cheated it it's not there. In "Bonnie and Clyde," however, real people die. Before they die they suffer, horribly. Before they suffer they laugh, and play checkers, and make love, or try to. These become people we know, and when they die it is not at all pleasant to be in the audience. Advertisement When people are shot in "Bonnie and Clyde." they are literally blown to bits.

Perhaps that seems shocking. But perhaps at this time, it is useful to be reminded that bullets really do tear skin and bone, and that they don't make nice round little holes like the Swiss cheese effect in Fearless Fosdick. We are living in a period when newscasts refer casually to "waves" of mass murders, Richard Speck's photograph is sold on posters in Old Town and snipers in Newark pose for Life magazine (perhaps they are busy now getting their ballads to rhyme). Violence takes on an unreal quality. The Barrow Gang reads its press clippings aloud for fun. When C.W. Moss takes the wounded Bonnie and Clyde to his father's home, the old man snorts: "What'd they ever do for you boy? Didn't even get your name in the paper." Is that a funny line, or a tragic one? The performances throughout are flawless. Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway , in the title roles, surpass anything they have done on the screen before and establish themselves (somewhat to my surprise) as major actors. Advertisement Michael J. Pollard , as C.W.

Moss, the driver and mechanic for the gang, achieves a mixture of moronic good humor and genuine pathos that is unforgettable. When Bonnie tells him, "We rob banks,'' and asks him to come along, he says nothing. But the expression on his face and the movements of his body create a perfect, delightful moment. Gene Hackman and Estelle Parsons play Buck and Blanche Barrow, the other members of the gang, as inarticulate, simple, even good - willed. When Buck is reunited with his kid brother, they howl with glee and punch each other to disguise the truth that they have nothing to say. After the gang has shot its way out of a police trap and Buck is mortally wounded, Blanche's high, mindless scream in the getaway car provides, for me, a very adequate vision of hell. This is pretty clearly the best American film of the year. It is also a landmark. Years from now it is quite possible that "Bonnie and Clyde" will be seen as the definitive film of the 1960s, showing with sadness, humor and unforgiving detail what one society had come to.

The fact that the story is set 35 years ago doesn't mean a thing. It had to be set sometime. But it was made now and it's about us. Advertisement ‘Bonnie & Clyde,’ a Special on A&E, History and Lifetime - The New York Times The New York Times Television |Just a Sweet Pair of Sociopaths Search Just a Sweet Pair of Sociopaths ‘Bonnie & Clyde,’ a Special on A&E, History and Lifetime Continue reading the main story Photo Bonnie & Clyde Emile Hirsch and Holliday Grainger in this two-part production, on Sunday and Monday evening on A&E, History and Lifetime. Credit Adam Taylor/A&E Among the inventions of the new “Bonnie & Clyde” — a four-hour extravaganza on Sunday and Monday nights, shown simultaneously by A&E, History and Lifetime — one of the less fortunate is a voice-over narration for the young killer Clyde Barrow. At turning points in the story, Barrow muses about fate, love and the reasons for the deadly two-year crime spree he carried out with Bonnie Parker and other associates in the early 1930s.

He comes up with a lot of explanations, which is to say he casts the blame widely: the Depression; his brother Buck, who, in this telling, starts him on his life of crime; Parker’s narcissistic hunger for fame; popular culture’s love affair with rebels and outlaws. He doesn’t mention one other strong possibility — that he was simply a murderous psychopath — but who wants to watch a big, romantic, softheaded mini-series about that? Comparisons with Arthur Penn’s 1967 film, “Bonnie and Clyde,” are pretty extraneous a half-century down the road, but, really, it’s hard to ignore the contrast. Zeroing in on Barrow and Parker’s short time together, Penn pioneered the artful presentation of extreme violence yet also convincingly rendered the texture of rural Texas in the Depression era and showcased bravura performances by Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. The television “Bonnie & Clyde,” written by John Rice and Joe Batteer and directed by Bruce Beresford, is thoroughly inoffensive and resolutely middle-of-the-road, a big slab of a story about a doomed love affair between two nice, good-looking kids who had some really bad luck.

As Barrow and Parker, Emile Hirsch (“Into the Wild”) and Holliday Grainger (“The Borgias”) are both older than their characters were when they died — Barrow was 25, Parker 23 — but they seem too young, too feckless, too clean. You don’t believe that these lightweights grew up in poverty or lived on the run or gunned down a series of lawmen, even as you watch them doing it. Photo William Hurt as a determined lawman in “Bonnie & Clyde.” Credit Adam Taylor/A&E Mr. Beresford (“Tender Mercies,” “Driving Miss Daisy”) gives the sentimental material a corresponding autumnal glow, and there are sweeping, lovely images of Texas fields under big skies, a shimmering crescent moon and an oil refinery sparkling in the night. A lot of trouble and expense appear to have gone into making the period details persuasive, but there’s still an artificial, playacting quality that may have to do with the actors or may be an inevitable consequence of high-definition viewing.

Advertisement Continue reading the main story One performance that does feel authentic, and that gives “Bonnie & Clyde” some weight, is William Hurt’s portrayal of Frank Hamer, the retired Texas Ranger who took over the search for Barrow and Parker and led the team that ambushed and killed them in 1934. Holly Hunter is also affecting in a small role as Parker’s mother. Otherwise, Mr. Beresford’s well-known facility with actors is demonstrated, perhaps, by the fact that no one really embarrasses himself or herself. The closing credits contain the disclaimer, “This story is based upon the lives of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow,” which is another way of saying, “Don’t believe anything you see.” The mini-series makes a show of chronological scrupulousness, with titles giving the dates and places of significant incidents; old photographs, newspaper pages and newsreels are incorporated for documentary effect. But the writers have freely rejiggered history, placing people at events they didn’t attend, leaving out important characters and introducing Buck Barrow and Hamer into the narrative earlier than they belong.

In real life, Hamer was brought into the case just four months before Barrow and Parker were killed; in the series, he misses them so many times that you begin to wonder why he had such a big reputation. In the end, “Bonnie & Clyde” has the one thing in common with “Bonnie and Clyde” that you’d expect: the fusillade of machine gun fire, and Barrow and Parker’s bodies twitching and bursting as they’re torn apart. While it doesn’t have the force of Penn’s brutal choreography, it’s a surprisingly graphic scene for basic cable. Less surprising is a gratuitous, last-minute plot twist that serves to cement the film’s portrayal of Barrow as a tragic, star-crossed hero. Apparently, only the misunderstood die young. Bonnie & Clyde A&E, History and Lifetime, Sunday and Monday nights at 9, Eastern and Pacific times; 8, Central time. Produced by Sony Pictures Television. Directed by Bruce Beresford; written by Jon Rice and Joe Batteer; Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, executive producers.

WITH: Emile Hirsch (Clyde Barrow), Holliday Grainger (Bonnie Parker), Holly Hunter (Emma Parker), William Hurt (Frank Hamer), Sarah Hyland (Blanche Barrow), Lane Garrison (Buck Barrow), Elizabeth Reaser (P. J. Lane), Austin Hebert (Ted Hinton) and Dale Dickey (Cummie Barrow). A version of this review appears in print on December 6, 2013, on Page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: Just a Sweet Pair Of Sociopaths. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

Question: Who directed the film Bonnie and Clyde?
Answer: ARTHUR PENN